New Chief At the CEO's Roundtable
October 30, 2006
Recent reports of criminal investigations, indictments and resignations of high-ranking company personnel coming out of the Hewlett-Packard boardroom remind us that, even after the scandals of the 1990s and the host of new laws, regulations and internal corporate practices that followed, bad things can happen at good companies. Among other things, the saga at HP reinforces the need for an independent compliance and ethics function at all publicly traded corporations. What follows is a proposal to create such a function by improving on the considerable advances in this area made by U.S. companies over the past several years. The foundation for this proposal is this: Ethical and compliance issues are best addressed by corporate officers who are organizationally, physically and financially independent from those of their colleagues who might be subject of their investigatory and reporting work.
Risk of Lawsuits Over Legal Recruiting Fees
October 30, 2006
In May, just 1 month after Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld announced Chang-Joo Kim had joined its New York office as a partner, the law firm cut a check to recruiting firm Boston Executive Search for $227,500. <br>But did it pay the right recruiter? New York search firm Sivin Tobin Associates says it sent Akin Gump a package about Kim last December, along with a term sheet. Sivin Tobin is now suing the law firm, alleging breach of an implied contract. In September, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Jane S. Solomon denied Akin Gump's motion to dismiss.
Executive Compensation Disclosure
October 30, 2006
On July 26, 2006, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted amendments to its rules relating to the disclosure of executive compensation. Since these new rules apply to SEC filings and reports for fiscal years ending on or after Dec. 15, 2006, public filers who use the calendar year as their fiscal year will be required to comply with the new disclosure requirements when preparing their 2007 proxy statements.
Analyzing Law Firm Business Capabilities With Heat Mapping
October 30, 2006
Law firms have been largely unable to take advantage of modern business improvement methods such as Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints ' complex techniques often applied to manufacturing processes ' with much success. Those methodologies are measurement-based strategies that focus on process improvement and variation reduction.
Improving Management of Hard Disbursements
October 30, 2006
Improved hard-disbursements management can mean major improvements for firms' financial performance. <br>In the mid-1990s, the IRS stopped allowing lawyers to deduct as a business expense funds advanced for clients, treating their repayment as income. The agency said such advances should be treated as loans. This policy turned the nation's lawyers into bankers making interest-free loans. Last year, the AmLaw 100 firms alone reportedly advanced more than $4.5 billion in such loans.
Real-Time Collaboration Solutions Yield Major Efficiencies
October 30, 2006
Real-time collaboration (RTC) has advanced to a point where its advantages bring benefits to almost every aspect of organizational communications. For law firms, RTC makes possible new ways of working that are simple to adopt, easy to afford, require little or no CapEx and, in most cases, utilize existing computer and peripheral equipment. RTC can bring together employees, clients, trainers and others in ways that save time and overcome distance, thereby delivering measurable competitive advantage.
Representing the Corporate Executive
October 30, 2006
As a result of the Seaboard Release (SEC, 2001) and the Thompson Memorandum, potential conflicts in representing both a corporation and its officers and executive employees have become more frequent. The corporation, in order to avoid prosecution and limit its exposure to civil damages, must promptly conduct an internal investigation and turn over the results of that investigation to the appropriate governmental agency as soon as possible. This may not be the best way to defend executives exposed to criminal liability.
Government Pressure on Employers
October 30, 2006
A white-collar criminal investigation, a business entity seeking to cooperate, and individual employees talking to the prosecutors ' all familiar scenarios to anyone experienced in federal criminal law. Recently, however, these elements combined to produce an unusual result: the suppression of the employees' statements to the government as involuntary under the Fifth Amendment. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued this ruling in the KPMG tax shelter prosecution, finding that the prosecutors, through their pressure on KPMG, economically coerced the company's employees to speak with the government in violation of their privilege against self-incrimination. Once again, the government's overly aggressive interpretation of the Thompson Memo has come back to haunt it.
